This invention relates to tire bead seating and inflating apparatus.
As is well-known, before tubeless tires can be inflated, it is necessary to set their beads against the wheel rim on which they are mounted to preclude air introduced into the tire through the valve from escaping between the bead and the rim. Over the years, a variety of devices for accomplishing the bead seating requirement have evolved. For example, various hoop-like devices have been employed for peripherally engaging the tire tread and forcing the same inwardly to cause the beads to seat. Such devices, while suitable for their intended purpose in most instances, are not susceptible to easy use with weak-walled tires such as radial ply tires. Moreover, they require manual placement and orientation about the periphery of the tire tread.
In attempts to improve on such prior art structures, collar-like sealing devices adapted to establish a seal between one sidewall of a tire and the edge of the corresponding rim were developed. Such structures are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,874,760 to Bishop and U.S. Pat. No. 2,874,761 to Varvaro. Such devices also work well for their intended purpose but are susceptible to difficulties in use either because of the fact that the collar must be manually placed as is the case with the Varvaro device or, the apparatus mounting the collar as disclosed by Biship is, for all intents and purposes, susceptible only to use as a bead seating and inflating device and cannot be used for other tire servicing purposes, thus requiring extensive manipulation of a wheel from one apparatus to another where more than simply bead seating and inflating is required.
Still another method of seating the beads of tires and inflating is that of creating a pressure differential across a tire sidewall. U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,469 to Corliss and U.S. Pat. No. 2,874,759 to Ranallo illustrate apparatus employing this princple but, in each instance, inflexibility of use of the apparatus or the requirement of manually locating the device prior to use is a significant drawback.
The difficulties attendant the use of the Corliss and Ranallo apparatus mentioned in the preceding paragraph have, in a large part, been overcome by the proposal of Strang et al in commonly assigned application Ser. No. 179,298, filed Sept. 10, 1971, entitled "Tire Bead Seating and Inflating Apparatus". But, even with such equipment, manual effort is required to move the bead seating and inflating apparatus to and from operative positions.
It has also been proposed that apparatus of the type disclosed by Corliss be mounted on the table of a conventional tire changing apparatus, thus eliminating any need for manual orientation of the device between operative and inoperative positions or, when a tire is to be placed on or removed from the tire changing device. However, this proposal is overly simplistic in its approach and some difficulty may be experienced with the same in terms of inflating tires on different size rims. Moreover, the same fails to contemplate peripheral equipment associated with such a bead seating and inflating device that may be of great assistance to the operator of such apparatus in maximizing the efficiency of the tire changing operation including the seating of the beads of the tire and the inflation thereof.